Edition #88 - 25 NOV 2023
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty, names Richard Teng as new CEO.
• Binance agrees to pay fines totalling $4.3 billion;
• Binance reached agreements with FinCEN, OFAC, CFTC and will credit $1.8B to them and additional forfeiture of $2.51 billion;
• Binance appoints an independent compliance monitor for 3 years;
• CZ plea deal may preserve company's ability to operate;
• CZ to retain majority ownership of Binance;
• CZ can't operate Binance for 3 years from start of agreed up on date.
gaming developments
Web3 platform for cross-game player profiles Artifact Lab raised $2M in a Pre-seed funding round led by RW3 Ventures, IOSG Ventures, with participation from Raptor Group, Cypher Capital, HerculesDAO.
Free-to-play Web3 games hold the key to mass adoption.
GAM3 Awards 2023 Shortlisted Final Nominees Revealed.
FPS Mobile Game in Metaverse Matr1x FIRE raised $10M in a Series A funding round led by Folius Ventures, SevenX Ventures, with participation from ABCDE Capital, Jambo, Initiate Capital, Find Satoshi Lab.
metaverses & AI
Sam Altman got fired and returned as OpenAI CEO following in-principle agreement.
Nike dropped some new sneakers that come with NFTs. There’s an embedded near-field communication (NFC) chip in the sneakers that lets the owner “obtain a digital collectible and connect the physical product shipped with the digital collectible obtained.”
Paris Saint-Germain F.C. is launching a new NFT collection. 10% of the collection will be redeemable for a box of physical items from the soccer club.
defi
Decentralized Open Compute Platform Expanso raised $7.5M in a Seed funding round led by General Catalyst, Hetz Ventures.
funding rounds
Web3 scalability protocol for the automated deployment of dedicated blockspace Saga raised $5M in a Seed funding round led by Placeholder.
Ethereum L2 with native yield for ETH and stablecoins Blast raised $20M funding round from Paradigm, Standard Crypto, eGirl Capital, Manifold, Santiago R. Santos.
NFT marketplace for pro traders Blur raised $40M funding round .
Toolkit for progressive authentication in Web3 Privy raised $18M in a Series A funding round led by Paradigm, with participation from Sequoia Capital, BlueYard Capital, Archetype, Linda Xie.